One of the big challenges we have today with Internet is sharing the knowledge. It could sound strange, but this is something I notice on a daily basis.
Most of the articles, papers or stuff that can be freely downloaded or read through blogs or web site are a pure re-elaboration of material that has been previously published.
So, if we really “normalize” the elements, de-duplicating the material we can see that a lot of stuff is useless.
That could be one of the many reasons why Google’s engineers recently released the “Farmer” update.
Why don’t people share?
Some of the common reasons are:
- “Knowledge is power” - it might be the owner-manager of a small company does not want to lose trade secrets, or an SEO Manager believes his last discover is the most important secret in the world; it may be also that a specialist has built up his or her own unique way of achieving success and this methodology represent the way of sustainment.
So knowledge IS power, but it is typically not the primary reason for lack of knowledge sharing. 2. “Not realizing how useful knowledge can be to others” – the knowledge that people have can be more than often be used in different situations, but individuals are often unaware that other people at other times and places might face similar situations.
Additionally, knowledge derived for one need may be helpful in different contexts, or it may be a trigger for innovation. 3. “Lack of trust” - if people share knowledge, this can be used out of context, misapplied, or worse than all, passed it off as your own bit without giving any acknowledgement or recognition to the author.
- “Lack of time” - I suspect this is the major reason for most of the people (or at least I would like to think so).
Being under pressure due the daily tasks, respecting the deadlines, and coming back home tired is not the best condition to sit (again) in front of a computer to write a masterpiece.
Having a family as retro scene, with children that claim your attention, make the game over.
Why this article then?
Well, despite I do normally come back home tired, and despite I have a family with a fantastic daughter who requires my attention, I believe that the “dirty” work need to be done anyway.
That’s the reason I like to share as much as I can. Read, digest, and create new articles and sharing my knowledge is a way to be part of the community, increasing the network relationship and sometimes to find new job opportunities.
So, just to conclude this small article today, here it is the last bit I did quite recently: an SEO analysis for a web site (which name can’t be revealed – lack of trust – NDR), which may be in any case useful to compile new and similar analysis.